Yesterday and today, Maggie and I have made some candles for the very first time. I got her a kit for Christmas as we've mentioned it loads of times before but never actually got round to it. We were going to go to the candle factory in Tattenhall but since that's almost an hour away, I thought we could first of all, just make them at home as it's a busy time of year. This is the kit we got - click here. We've made a double shaded green floating candle. The main reason it's double shaded is because the instructions for the floating candle we made was that we needed two cupfuls of paraffin but we found that we needed more than that, so the second batch we melted had more coloured wax in it. We found that it takes longer than 30 minutes to melt, which is the time allowed in the instructions. Possibly a reason for that is that we have a gas hob, whereas the instructions suggest an electric hob which emits a more steady heat apparently.
You may well notice the raised line going from left to right. That is a hitch with the kit. That line is created by the cardboard wick 'holder-up-erer', which sits on the top of the mould but when that's full of melted paraffin, the 'holder-up-erer' is in the paraffin unfortunately and has to be teased out of the candle when it's set.
We also had an 'issue' as such with the hole I had to make in the bottom of the mould to allow the wick to fit through; I made it too big and on our first attempt some of the paraffin went through the hole, hence the reason we needed to make more I think.
I do like the kit though for beginners as there's some wax crayons to grate to colour each candle and you get the special bowl in which you put the paraffin to melt it. Everything you need to create your first candles, other than a pointy tool. You need that to get rid of any air after the first pouring of the paraffin into the mould; I just used an old pair of craft tweezers. Actually another thing I found handy was greaseproof paper. We grated the crayons tonight over that and then poured it into the melted paraffin. That way you don't have to do it over the heat of the pan and also it means you don't get any all over the hob. The wax doesn't stick to the greaseproof paper of course.
We found a glass dish in the kitchen, filled it with water and Maggie lit her first candle and it was shining over our dinner time tonight. Chris had made a ham and turkey soup and my napkin box was there too. All in all a very homemade dinner time was had by us, which is brilliant.
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